In the past, photography was a discipline reserved to those with specialized knowledge and equipment. Over the past decades, innovations in digital photographic hardware and software, and the worldwide spread of smartphones with integrated digital cameras, have placed digital photography at the fingertips of billions of consumers. In this environment of ubiquitous access to digital photography and videography, consumers increasingly desire to be able to quickly and easily capture moments using their smartphones. However, the camera, and other components of the smartphone (e.g., display hardware, illumination hardware, etc.) can consume appreciable power if left in an active mode, which can appreciably reduce battery life and have other undesirable effects. As such, smartphones (and some or all of their higher power components) are typically kept in a sleep mode when not in use. For example, smartphones often are kept in a locked state, and most or all functions of the smartphone can only be accessed after unlocking the smartphone.
When the smartphone is locked, and a consumer desires to capture a photo or video, the consumer typically presses a button, or interacts with another interface, to unlock the smartphone. This wakes up certain component resources, such as the smartphone display. A user interface of the smartphone can be used to access a camera application. When the camera application starts, the application can access and wake up various camera-related component resources, such as camera and illumination hardware and software. After the camera-related component resources are ready, the consumer can interact again with user interface elements to trigger the camera to capture a photo or video. For many typical smartphone, there can be a delay of a couple to a few seconds between the time the smartphone is unlocked and the time when a photo can be captured by the smartphone. In some situations, such a delay is too long. For example, a particular moment may have passed without time to capture it. Thus, while maintaining the camera in a sleep mode when not in use can help to appreciably increase battery life of the smartphone, accessing and waking the camera from the sleep mode can add appreciable delay to use of the camera.